the Eternal within them, then they
can speak of it. Hence the hard saying of Plato is quite real to them,
that the uninitiated sinks into the mire, and that only one who has
passed through the mystical life enters eternity. It is only in this
sense that the words in the fragment of Sophocles can be understood:
"Thrice-blessed are the initiated who come to the realm of the shades.
They alone have life there. For others there is only misery and
hardship."

Is one therefore not describing dangers when speaking of the
Mysteries? Is it not robbing a man of happiness and of the best part
of his life to take him to the portals of the nether-world? Terrible
is the responsibility incurred by such an act. And yet ought we to
refuse that responsibility? These were the questions which the
initiate had to put to himself. He was of opinion that his knowledge
bore the same relation to the soul of the people as light does to
darkness. But innocent happiness dwells in that darkness, and the
Mystics were of opinion that that happiness should not be
sacrilegiously interfered with. For what would have happened in the
first place if the Mystic had betrayed his secret? He would have
uttered words and only words. The feelings and emotions which would
have evoked the spirit from the words would have been absent. To do
this preparation, exercises, tests, and a complete change in the life
of sense were necessary. Without this the hearer would have been
hurled into emptiness and nothingness. He would have been deprived of
what constituted his happiness, without receiving anything in
exchange. One may also say that one could take nothing away from him,
for mere words would change nothing in his life of feeling. He would
only have been able to feel and experience reality through his senses.
Nothing but a terrible misgiving, fatal to life, would be given him.
This could only be construed as a crime.

The wisdom of the Mysteries is like a hothouse plant, which must be
cultivated and fostered in seclusion. Any one bringing it into the
atmosphere of everyday ideas brings it into air in which it cannot
flourish. It withers away to nothing before the caustic verdict of
modern science and logic. Let us therefore divest ourselves for a
time of the education we gained through the microscope and telescope
and the habit of thought derived from natural science, and let us
cleanse our clumsy hands, which have been too busy with dissecting and
experimenting,